When at last, however, the hurricane’s back was broken, and Æolus had reined up his maddened chargers and curbed their flying wings, and when all the demons of the wind had gone moaningly back to their caverns in the clouds, the doctor arose, and with the boy beside him, knelt devoutly before the altar while he uttered a fervent prayer of thanksgiving.
“Come, my Henri, now we may go out and see if we can find something to eat and drink. You are weak and hungry, my poor little boy; but you shall not suffer much longer.”
That strong man, with the heart of a gentle woman, had no thought of how ill, and famished, and thirsty he himself was from the terrible torture he had endured. No, he only thought of the child who had saved him.
In front of the chapel the sand and bushes were piled up in ridgy heaps, the coral wall around the cemetery had been thrown down, while the flat head-stones over the pirates’ graves had disappeared entirely. Not so, however, with the white slabs near by where those poor doomed women were lying; for the hurricane had spared their tombs, and a pall of pure white sand was sprinkled evenly over their remains. Bending over them was the trunk of the cocoa-nut, with 169 its top stripped and its leafless branches quivering in the wind; while from below them streamed out the long, thin green silk rope which had so often served Captain Brand, the pirate, for his private executions. Near at hand lay the trestle on which the doctor had been stretched––caught by the base of the cocoa-nut column, and half buried in sand––while the cruel strips of raw-hide which had lashed the victim down were tied and twisted into a maze of complicated knots by the nimble fingers of the winds.
The doctor started, and his half-closed eyes shot out gleams of anger as he beheld the unconscious implements designed for his torturing murder; and leaving the child at the doorway to the chapel, he sallied out, detached the rope, loosened the trestle from its sandy bed, and placed them in a corner of the chapel.
Then carefully picking his way, with the boy in his great arms, over the trees and débris which obstructed the pathway, he speedily reached the site on which had stood the sheds of the “Centipede’s” crew. Fire, water, and wind had done their work effectually, though the fire had partially spared the detached storehouse and shed which he had shared with the infamous padre. All else was a ruin of loose blocks of stone, broken tiles, nearly buried in banks of sand. From a well in the once busy court-yard, and which had also escaped the devouring elements, the doctor drew a bucket or two of water, in which he slaked the boy’s thirst and then his own, and afterward poured water over their bodies. Then, from a still smouldering beam which puffed out at intervals a thin curl of smoke from beneath one of the sheds, he lit a fire in the court-yard, while from the wreck of the storeroom he succeeded in rescuing some hard biscuit and a ham. This last he tore in shreds, and placing them on sticks before the fire, they were thus enabled to make a hearty meal, first providing for the wants of the child, however––soaking the biscuit for him, as if it were his first duty on earth. Again raising the boy in his arms, he passed from the ruined sheds and bent his steps toward Captain Brand’s former dwelling. The road was heaped with shells and sand, strewed with shoals of dead fish and wounded or dying birds, while the wreck of a boat, mingled with the timbers and planks of the jetty to the basin, were lying pell-mell on the beach of the little cove. Casting his eyes around in search of the once spacious dwelling, with its vaults, veranda, and saloon, he could hardly at first trace a vestige of the structure. The powder, more destructive even than the hurricane, had tossed walls and building into a confused heap of rubbish; then came the wind and sand on top of the rocks which had tumbled down by the concussion of the first explosion, and then the water, packing all together as if no habitation had ever existed there. The doctor walked slowly around until he came to the angle where the kitchen once was, and there, three fourths hidden beneath a mass of 170 blackened stones and charred timber, peered forth the white skeleton of a human being. The flesh had been seared and burned from the face and skull by the instantaneous flash of the powder, and there lay the remains of Babette, whitely bleached, as if she had been thrown a lifeless corpse on the sea-beach. A few yards below this frightful spectacle lay a number of shattered boxes and trunks, then a confused bundle of clothes, and a sandy saturated collection of kitchen utensils and crockery. Yes, the poor dumb woman, the creature and witness of many a cruel scene, ignorant or uncertain of the warning given her by the master she loved, had fallen another tribute to his long list of victims.
The doctor only waited long enough to select a few necessary articles from the heterogeneous heap before him, and then, with the child still clinging contentedly to his shoulder, he returned to the chapel.